BAE Systems Information and Electronic Systems Integration Inc. v. L3Harris Cincinnati Electronics Corporation

The petitioner, who had previously been convicted of murder, appealed, on the granting of certification, from the habeas court's judgment denying his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The petitioner claimed, inter alia, that the court improperly concluded that his second criminal trial counsel, S, did not provide ineffective assistance of counsel when he made a decision not to present the testimony of G, the petitioner's former girlfriend and mother of his child, who had offered alibi testimony at the petitioner's first criminal trial. Held: The habeas court correctly concluded, in light of all of the evidence, that S made a reasoned, strategic choice, after a thorough investigation, not to pre- sent both an alibi defense and a misidentification defense, as S investigated G as an alibi witness, considered her relationship to the petitioner, and determined that she would not make a good witness, and, instead, focused his defense on challenging the police investigation and the state's identifi- cation evidence. The habeas court did not err in its determination that S's conduct in failing to present an alibi defense at the petitioner's second criminal trial did not constitute deficient performance. The habeas court did not abuse its discretion in sustaining the objection of the respondent's counsel to a hypothetical question posed to an expert witness for the petitioner related to S's allegedly deficient performance, as the question could not reasonably be separated from the essence of the ultimate issue that was before the court, namely, whether the standard of care required S to present the alibi defense. Argued March 26, 2025—officially released February 10, 2026